Wi-Fi vs wired - am I missing something

[flhrci]

So, on a whim I decided to hook up my wireless-G USB adapter to my desktop which I normally run wired to the router via gigabit LAN connection.

Attached is the speed test result.



When I run the test with the adapter disconnected and hooked back up to Ethernet the result is nearly identical.

So, here is my question. Why is it encouraged to run with Ethernet over wireless for speed when the results seem identical? What am I missing here?

David

 

[acluffpoa]

You disconnected the LAN cable when you did the wireless test correct? There are many things that are in play here and it would be impossible for anyone not having access to your system to do more analysis to tell you what is really going on.

By the way... we don't see your test results in your post. What speeds are you seeing?

 

[mjburian]

I don't see the speed test results in your post, but I'll say this:

If you're internet connection to the house/building is slower than the max wifi speed (54 Mbit/s to 600 Mbit/s for 802.11n, according to Wikipedia) then there's no benefit to going wired vs. wireless to access the external internet. However, if you have an internal network (more than one device hooked up) and they are both wired you'll be able to transfer data between those devices faster than if they were both wireless.

The difference is in how fast your provider will allow you to transfer data to/from the internet vs. how fast your router will allow you to transfer data between devices on your internal network. Most people don't have fast enough internet service from their provider to make a difference wired vs wireless. But, as an example, if you're backing up a computer to a NAS (network attached storage) device, having both the computer and the NAS wired will allow that backup to complete MUCH faster than if they were both connected wirelessly.

Edited to add:
Your proximity to the wireless router may also make a difference. I have a laptop sitting right next to my router (could be wired but it's a laptop that I move frequently so I keep it wireless to make it more easily portable). Speed tests on that laptop FAR exceed the tests done on devices on the other side of the house (wireless, and further away from the router).

 

[Stewartb]

If your modem and wireless router are properly rated to your data speed you won't see much if any difference. At least I don't. With my old modem and router? Big difference, and those were only a couple of years old. The capability of your system is only as good as the weakest link. The wired route has fewer links and fewer potentials for signal degradation like from interior walls, floors, etc.

 

[flhrci]

You disconnected the LAN cable when you did the wireless test correct? There are many things that are in play here and it would be impossible for anyone not having access to your system to do more analysis to tell you what is really going on.

By the way... we don't see your test results in your post. What speeds are you seeing?

Yes, disconnected the LAN cable. The results are in the attachment as a .jpg file.

22.64mbps down, 2.34Mbps up, 35ms latency and 5ms jitter. Nearly identical for wireless and wired.

Router is a Linksys EA 6500 with

• Latest Draft 802.11ac wireless technology*
• Backwards compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n devices
• Simultaneous Dual-Band with speeds up to 450 + 1300 Mbps*
• SpeedBoost™ technology
• Gigabit Ethernet Ports

blah, blah, blah

David

 

[Kiddo's Driver]

My thought on this is to minimize the number of devices going through the wireless network. In my house you could have 13 devices running on the wireless network.
Plus more when there are guests.

The practical limit is 7 devices. Because of that we have hard wired everything we can. Making it a likely limit of 5 devices. The practical limit is based on our use patterns. We are not likely to use all 13 devices at the same time, but I have seen 5 truly wireless devices being used at one time.

Jim

 

[flhrci]

I see what you guys are saying. The desktop wired or wireless is about 2 feet from the router. I use one ipad, iphone and 1 laptop with it. Usually only the desktop and iPad are together online at any one time.

David

 

[jsstevens]

My thought on this is to minimize the number of devices going through the wireless network. In my house you could have 13 devices running on the wireless network.
Plus more when there are guests.

The practical limit is 7 devices. Because of that we have hard wired everything we can. Making it a likely limit of 5 devices. The practical limit is based on our use patterns. We are not likely to use all 13 devices at the same time, but I have seen 5 truly wireless devices being used at one time.

Jim

Why is the practical limit 7 devices?

John

 

[RJM62]

Why is the practical limit 7 devices?

John

I think Jim was referring to his particular setup and the data requirements of the various devices before things start slowing down. There is no hard limit on the number of devices other than those determined by the router and the class of network, exclusive of the radio. But there are limits in terms of how many devices can be efficiently served by a router that will vary according to their data requirements.

Rich

 

[SkyHog]

Long Term Packet loss is a much bigger reason that WiFi tends to be slower. With TCP connections, lost packets are repeatedly resent until confirmed delivered. With UDP connections, that's not necessarily true - it is more "fire and forget."

 

[jsstevens]

I think Jim was referring to his particular setup and the data requirements of the various devices before things start slowing down. There is no hard limit on the number of devices other than those determined by the router and the class of network, exclusive of the radio. But there are limits in terms of how many devices can be efficiently served by a router that will vary according to their data requirements.

Rich

That makes sense. I wondered if there was some inherent limit I was unaware of.

I had a very capable NetGear wireless router but their "parental control" software was a linkage to an external web site which had very flexible but complicated rules to build. I wanted to limit time on my daughter's devices by MAC. So I switched to a Linksys. Which works, but has some interesting "features". Like the parental controls don't stay set unless the router is at the default address of 192.168.1.1. My normal practice is to move it to a different address. Just some basic security stuff. Make the other targets easier for hackers to find. But not with this rig. You can set it all up with different address and parental controls and it will work. But after a while (something under 24 hours) it will revert the parental controls to off. Known problem. Sigh.

John

Corrected autocorrect from "prenatal" to "parental". STOP HELPING ME!

 

[John221us]

Why is the practical limit 7 devices?

John

It is really not, but for all intents and purposes, an AP acts like a hub and not a switch (shared bandwidth). My rule of thumb is about 15 devices, but again, that is not a hard limit.

 

[jsstevens]

It is really not, but for all intents and purposes, an AP acts like a hub and not a switch (shared bandwidth). My rule of thumb is about 15 devices, but again, that is not a hard limit.

Ah! I didn't realize they act as a hub.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Also, one wireless device with a crap signal will throttle down everyone else in many cases. If someone walks in with a B device, all your G and N devices will slow down to B speeds. I think this is still the case.

 

[Kiddo's Driver]

I think Jim was referring to his particular setup and the data requirements of the various devices before things start slowing down. There is no hard limit on the number of devices other than those determined by the router and the class of network, exclusive of the radio. But there are limits in terms of how many devices can be efficiently served by a router that will vary according to their data requirements.

Rich

Not even that. It is two kids, each on an iPad. Wife on her laptop while streaming something through the Apple TV to the bedroom TV. Me on my laptop and streaming something through the other Apple TV to the living room TV. Plus me checking work email on my work phone. Not enough hands to really use more than 7 things at once.

We hard wired the Apple TVs to get them out of the equation leaving me with a realistic limit of 5 devices at once.

5 is plenty, especially with two of them streaming video. (Netflix on the iPads.)

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

This is also why I opted to pull Cat5 to my HD IP security cameras and disable the built in WiFi option.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Long Term Packet loss is a much bigger reason that WiFi tends to be slower. With TCP connections, lost packets are repeatedly resent until confirmed delivered. With UDP connections, that's not necessarily true - it is more "fire and forget."

Little recognized fact about 802.11 (WiFi), wired Ethernet, 3G, and 4G link layers is that they all support retransmissions up to a certain amount before giving up if their transmissions aren't acknowledged. As a result packet loss (as seen by higher layers) at the link layer rarely appears greater than 1% over any hop, but the penalty can be significant jitter and latency. This tends to mess with TCP's congestion avoidance and throttling algorithms which use round trip time (RTT) on the ACKs to adjust their transmission windows, which means that excessive jitter will reduce TCP throughput.

 

[Henning]

The limit is going to be the slowest choke in the system. Most systems the wifi speed is not the choke point, so there is no longer any advantage to a wire. I haven't used one on anything in many years.

 

[PaulS]

Your connection isn't even half fast......... I love those fios commercials.

 

[dans2992]

This is also why I opted to pull Cat5 to my HD IP security cameras and disable the built in WiFi option.

Yep, burning a decent portion of your WIFi spectrum with a 24x7 HD camera feed is a waste if there is any possible way it can be wired...

 

[Everskyward]

Funny that I opened this thread just now, right after I switched from wifi to wired in a hotel where the wifi connection was very s-l-o-w but the wired connection is much better.

 

[John221us]

Funny that I opened this thread just now, right after I switched from wifi to wired in a hotel where the wifi connection was very s-l-o-w but the wired connection is much better.

I bought a Netgear Trek for that. It will act as a wireless repeater or a hotspot if you plug it into a hotel wired connection. It also authenticates the hotel connection (wired or wireless) and hides all your devices behind that, so you don't have that annoying three device limit and devices, like Apple TV and such that can't navigate the login page will work.
http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Trek-...sr=8-2&keywords=netgear+portable+wifi+hotspot

 

[Everskyward]

I bought a Netgear Trek for that. It will act as a wireless repeater or a hotspot if you plug it into a hotel wired connection. It also authenticates the hotel connection (wired or wireless) and hides all your devices behind that, so you don't have that annoying three device limit and devices, like Apple TV and such that can't navigate the login page will work.
http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Trek-...sr=8-2&keywords=netgear+portable+wifi+hotspot

What would the advantage would be over just plugging into the ethernet port directly, that is, other than the three device limit? I only have three devices. My other two devices have cell service. I can see how it might be an advantage in other countries, though, where data roaming is expensive.

 

[Henning]

What would the advantage would be over just plugging into the ethernet port directly, that is, other than the three device limit? I only have three devices. My other two devices have cell service. I can see how it might be an advantage in other countries, though, where data roaming is expensive.

Devices that don't take a cable like my iPad, and devices like my phone that can do wifi calling with no roaming or long distance charges when foreign.

 

[John221us]

What would the advantage would be over just plugging into the ethernet port directly, that is, other than the three device limit? I only have three devices. My other two devices have cell service. I can see how it might be an advantage in other countries, though, where data roaming is expensive.

Well, there are a couple of advantages:

1) It will work as a wireless extender, if you have range issues, even at home.
2) You will configure your devices for it once and then you are done. You don't need to authenticate each and every device, each and everyday once you get to the hotel. You authenticate from one device and it takes care of the rest.
3) There are some devices, like Chromecast and AppleTV that can't navigate the authentication screen for a hotel. This gets around that limitation.
4) As Henning mentioned, some devices don't have an option to hardwire. Also, it frees you from being chained to the desk. You can move to the table or kickback on the bed.

 

[Everskyward]

Devices that don't take a cable like my iPad, and devices like my phone that can do wifi calling with no roaming or long distance charges when foreign.

This would probably be the main selling point for me if I decided to get one.

 

[John221us]

This would probably be the main selling point for me if I decided to get one.

It is not for everyone, I suppose, but I spend half my nights in hotel rooms and find that situations come up often enough where this helps. For the price ($35) and size, it was a good solution for me. For the occasional hotel dweller, it probably isn't worth it. Hotel Wifi is good enough, most of the time.

 

[Everskyward]

It is not for everyone, I suppose, but I spend half my nights in hotel rooms and find that situations come up often enough where this helps. For the price ($35) and size, it was a good solution for me. For the occasional hotel dweller, it probably isn't worth it. Hotel Wifi is good enough, most of the time.

I'm a quite frequent hotel-dweller. The price is not the issue. I just wonder if I want to carry another gadget with me or not.

 

[John221us]

I'm a quite frequent hotel-dweller. The price is not the issue. I just wonder if I want to carry another gadget with me or not.

It's pretty small. About 3" square by 1". Everything is built in, so no wires, including the power supply. I did buy a retractable Ethernet cable, so I could plug into wired, if needed. It is pretty plug and play, too. It pops up a wizard, when you open a web browser and it will walk you through attaching.

 

[CT4ME]

In the past, WiFi offered convenience, but sucked on speed, reliability and security. Each WiFi spec (b,g,n etc) offered improvements. The "current" spec AC, is getting pretty good on all fronts and is beginning to put WiFi on par with legacy wired connections. Of course, as WiFi progresses, so does wired Ethernet. 10Gigabit is out there, and is being slowly adopted, but is being overshadowed by Fiber.

 

[Henning]

In the past, WiFi offered convenience, but sucked on speed, reliability and security. Each WiFi spec (b,g,n etc) offered improvements. The "current" spec AC, is getting pretty good on all fronts and is beginning to put WiFi on par with legacy wired connections. Of course, as WiFi progresses, so does wired Ethernet. 10Gigabit is out there, and is being slowly adopted, but is being overshadowed by Fiber.

What I have found with 10GB and other high speed gear is it is far and away not the slowest part of the system and has never shown me an improvement.

 

[jesse]

What I have found with 10GB and other high speed gear is it is far and away not the slowest part of the system and has never shown me an improvement.

Usually hitting other bottlenecks first for sure in home scenarios, but in the enterprise it certainly has it's use. That said I've never really had a reason to use 10 gigabit ethernet - always using fiber at that point.

 

[Henning]

Usually hitting other bottlenecks first for sure in home scenarios, but in the enterprise it certainly has it's use. That said I've never really had a reason to use 10 gigabit ethernet - always using fiber at that point.

Even on our entertainment server streaming to a dozen boxes, the routers and switches were not the problem.

 

[jesse]

Even on our entertainment server streaming to a dozen boxes, the routers and switches were not the problem.

Your entertainment server most likely didn't have enough IO to push more than a gigabit of data. Streaming a couple video feeds certainly doesn't come close to that.

You go to 10 gigabit when you're bound at 1 gigabit. If you're not bound, which you can easily determine, then it's a pointless upgrade.

Most people are never going to be bound at 1 gigabit unless you're dealing with enterprise networks. Usually if you have a situation where you need more than a gigabit network you have network engineers handling things.

10 gigabit is not FASTER than 1 gigabit if you don't push more than 1 gigabit of data. It's like adding more parallel runways when you only need to land one airplane.

Hardly anyone is making 10 gigabit networks to end-users. The end user will never push that kind of data. They're using 10 gigabit ethernet or fiber links between core switching equipment or high IO san devices where needed.

 

[chartbundle]

I have 10G between my home file server and my home desktop, no switch, direct connect... switch would have made the cost about 5x. But that's because I really can push in the neighborhood of 200MB/sec. It makes things like video editing very nice. All the 'Entertainment' gear is on 1G(PS4, Home Theater PC, TV tuners) wired and only the portable devices get Wi Fi.

 

[John221us]

Jesse is right. Very few networks need over a gig. Even the lower end SAN stuff is IO bound. You need a lot of spindles to push more than that.

 

[denverpilot]

And a backplane that can handle it.

There's a reason server class hardware is expensive, even if it just looks to most folk like another PC that's rack-mountable.

This morning I clicked one button and started up 12 virtual machines in 20 seconds on a very mediocre internal server. All were pushing big bandwidth (the applications and OSs on them are not CPU-limited, they're I/O speed limited) a few seconds later.

The reason the server could do it is a fast hardware RAID controller, 12 15,000 RPM disks, all capable of pushing 6GB/sec simultaneously out, and slightly slower to write. And multiple Gig-Ethernet connections in a trunked configuration.

How does this relate to the home stuff? Design your network around what the devices need to do. If everything is connecting to the Internet, most home providers aren't sending more than 100 Mb/sec.

Anything faster than the Internet uplink speed in the local LAN, is then designed around moving data between the local machines.

1Gb/sec is a good price point for internal traffic like backups to a NAS or shared disk, video file copying, etc. Wireless is often more than adequate.